


dream me the world

by cydonic



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Animal Death, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes is basically Ronan Lynch, Dreamer AU, First Kiss, Happy Ending, Healing, Hydra (Marvel), Inspired by the Raven Cycle, M/M, Minor Character Death, Needles, POV Bucky Barnes, Pining, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:34:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24485179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cydonic/pseuds/cydonic
Summary: Sometimes, if Bucky is very lucky or very unlucky, the things he dreams come back with him into the real world.(a Raven Cycle-inspired, canon divergent, get together fic)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 29
Kudos: 93





	dream me the world

**Author's Note:**

> so my "short thing I'm gonna write" became this, but I'm so very proud of it.
> 
> firstly, the thanks: to [Jen](https://twitter.com/jenofthemoon) and [Avery](https://twitter.com/sunbardy) for the constant cheerleading and support. I love you both so dearly. you mean the world to me.
> 
> secondly, the warnings: this fic does start with Bucky still being held by Hydra, and there are instances of them hurting him. they kill some of the dream creatures he brings back, which include humans and animals. though these aren't necessarily "real" I have tagged for both, as, in some instances, they die the way real things die. if that makes sense. there is also a scene with needles - they are dream things, but I tagged for them to be safe. please reach out to me on twitter for more detailed content warnings! I promise it is not extremely dark.
> 
> thirdly, my contact: please reach out on twitter [@_cydonic](https://twitter.com/_cydonic) \- let me know what you think!
> 
> finally: if you haven't read any of the Raven Cycle books, please do yourself a favour and pick them up! they're delightful! (also I guess this could count as minor spoilers if you haven't read the books!)

_“While I'm gone," Gansey said, pausing, "dream me the world. Something new for every night.”_

― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves.

\---

It started while awaiting extraction in the Russian wilderness, hours from civilisation.

(Or rather, it started at age six, when Bucky Barnes had seen Steve Rogers fly at a boy fist-first over the way he'd kicked a stray puppy, and he thought, _yeah, I could love him_ , but that's not the most emotionally fitting start for this story)

The handler says, "sleep," in a language he distantly recognises, in the way one speaks of an unwanted animal - sleep, because you're useless to us; be quiet and be still and be good.

It's been days since he's slept, or maybe years. The artificial thrum of energy in his veins has peaked and gone, leaving him bereft and edgy, aching to tear the skin from his chest so he might squeeze life into his heart manually.

He lays down to sleep. The floor is cold - the bed is for the handler, a disobedient dog gets the concrete - but that, at least, is familiar. He closes his eyes and falls asleep.

Sad, really, that when he sleeps he dreams of sleep. He dreams of the tube, imposing and terrifying and a reprieve. He touches his hand to the cold glass exterior, runs fingers over the dials and buttons people smarter and more qualified than him operate. He clings to it because, in there, awaits a dreamless sleep. He doesn't know why that's important, only that it is.

Because he clings to it, and because misfortune stalks his every step, the dream followers the dreamer away.

When his eyes open, it's to a scream. He is momentarily left there, hovering above his body, watching himself awaken.

Filling the single, cold room of the cabin is the tube. He is inside and outside of it. The handler is yelling in a language he no longer recognises, by choice or by design.

When he stands and lays his hand flat to the glass surface, he can feel it through the liquid suspending his clone: he is not alive.

Perhaps neither of them are.

\---

They take the handler home and him - to the same place, but it's not home.

They shake him, the other him, and demand an explanation. He knows now that he is choosing not to listen, but he can't make himself do much else. He's staring at the way the damp lashes clot together on his bone-white cheeks.

"Make another," they demand, dropping him, and the lifeless body slithers to the floor. He didn't dream bones into it. It's a mess of skin and tissue and hair sinking slowly into a puddle. Someone retches. "One that works."

"No," he answers at last, and makes a frenzied dive for himself. They will clear him away, and perhaps they will clear both of them away if they are both boneless and pointless.

It is not to be.

The other body disappears, and they keep him awake.

\---

It's been a lifetime since he was awake long enough to dream. His body knows this, or his brain does, or both, and it makes up for lost time.

He brings back tokens. Some intentional, some not. A wooden box of rotted oranges, an endless handful of cigarette butts, a lighter that sparks flower buds. A fully assembled tent with no way in, a gun with unlimited ammunition (they like that one), a shield the size of a thumbtack; red, white, and blue.

For each item he returns with that is _not_ himself, they beat him.

It becomes a vicious cycle, therefore: to dream is to escape, to dream is to remain trapped.

Then, he goes to sleep, and he dreams of Bucky. He is Bucky, the body his but the consciousness finally named. He cannot see himself, not in the tube, but he can feel the body he inhabits. The cold is filled steadily with lukewarm water, a tingling in his extremities. He lifts his hand to his eyes and looks at it - _really_ looks.

It is made of flesh and bone, muscle and sinew, pulse and soul. It is left and right.

Bucky does as he's asked and returns with himself. He is one that works.

They are not so pleased with the severed arm he drops on the floor.

" _Bucky_ ," he rasps, and they drag him to the chair.

\---

When he awakens, his hands are bound and empty. They drag him to the floor, kick him a few times for good measure, and lift his head by his hair. There's a slow heaviness to his limbs, an unresponsiveness he can't overcome.

"Make _this_ ," they hiss, shaking him like a disobedient dog, forcing him to look.

There's a mirror. His own reflection stares back at him. He doesn't know who it is, only that it must be him.

Something slides under his skin, a pressure, and he's asleep.

It's long and dreamless.

This is displeasing to them for reasons he can't discern.

He doesn't know when he falls asleep again, just that he dreams of somewhere cold but nice. It's not the nondescript concrete floor that could be anywhere in the world, but a meadow with frost-tipped flowers in all the colours of the rainbow. It's cold but the sun is shining, the ground is warm with life, and there's something soft against his chest. He buries his fingers in it, absorbs the endless comfort.

When he returns, she is still in his arms. A certain softness surrounds the edges of his existence, dulls his sharpness. It feels distantly familiar. Slowly, sensations return, and he can look now - hadn't been able to move his head in that dream place, had just been able to enjoy.

Perhaps it is for this reason: there, he could embrace her warmth and derive some joy from it; here, he manages a single glance before she's snatched away.

A cat. Snow white. Her eyes, big and baby blue, find his as the life is wrung from her neck.

He feels himself cry as she wails, and then is finally silent in death. Her eyes bulge, bloody and red.

They toss her at his feet. He can't decide if it's a threat or a promise, but he presses his face to her side and inhales the mountain air scent of her.

\---

It is an inevitably, like the law of gravity or equal and opposite reactions, that every time Bucky remembers Bucky, he remembers Steve, too.

The longer they leave him free, the closer the memories come. They take him in his dreams, throwing him into a Brooklyn childhood, or a wartorn adulthood, or clinging to the back of a speeding train.

If he awakens with a name on his lips - a whispered, _"Bucky,"_ or a terrified, desperate, " _Steve?"_ \- they will drag him to the chair immediately.

But if Bucky awakens like this, with his head pillowed on a small chest, rising and falling with each wheezing breath, they will watch. His hand finds that fine, greasy hair of Steve's, and buries itself within it. The scent of him surrounds Bucky: cheap, latherless soap over pencil shavings over a body odour he can only attribute to Steve, stronger in the summer or in the throes of fever, but ever present.

He blinks himself slowly awake, and Steve’s chest is his horizon line. Beyond that is the ocean of cold, grey concrete, parts of it stained with blood, but here - _here_ is Steve. Bucky draws one hand down from his hair, over his face.

He remembers it by touch.

(the times he gently soothed Steve through a fever with his cool fingers, himself burning up with shame)

A small scar on one eyebrow - it never healed up quite right. He fingers the missing hairs in the space, lovingly strokes the raised skin. His thumb grazes a thrice-broken nose, the lump that remains as stubborn and proud and in your face as its owner. He presses a kiss with his fingerprints to Steve’s lips, parted in gentle, eternal sleep.

Bucky allows the sound of Steve breathing, constant if a little unsteady, to ground him. To bring him safety.

Because they come over soon enough, and they press a gun to Steve’s head, and they empty their ammunition into him.

Steve doesn’t die, but then, he was never really alive.

They drag his bloody, destroyed corpse away, and Bucky listens to the rattle of his breath until he can’t any longer.

\---

He reimagines the cat.

Someone hisses, “did we have to take him to the _fucken_ Alps? I’m freezing my ass off,” as he considers her. The sound of her yowl haunts him when he sleeps. He took the sound back with him. They had to leave. That is why they’re here. _Fucken Alps_.

Her eyes, too.

He thinks.

He sleeps.

In his dream, she trots over to him. She knows where he is without sight - where two blue eyes had been before (the colour of the sky outside if the world hasn’t already ended, what does he know?), there is white fur, endless. She opens her mouth, but the sound that escapes is not feline. It is the sound of soft crackling between tracks on a vinyl record. It makes him smile.

She is purring.

He cups her face gently, smoothing thumbs over the empty plane of her face. A nose, a mouth. No eyes.

Steve has blue eyes.

Steve had blue eyes.

Bucky startles awake, arms wrapped around his cat, his little snow-coloured girl.

It’s not to be. She springs from his grip with a noise like a record scratching, loud and sudden and unexpected. Bucky can’t cling to her, but there are so many men who can. Men with gloves, men with fingers who aren’t clumsy with a bone-deep chill.

As they throttle the life from her again, a haunting song plays from her open mouth. _'Then kiss me once again,'_ the voice says - a man curses and shakes the cat, the record scratches, skips, continues. _'It's been a long, long time.'_ Her tongue protrudes from her mouth, swollen. Blood stains her white fur.

And Bucky thinks, _it has, it has, it has - has it?_

\---

They don’t take him to the chair. The chair isn’t here.

He brings her back again, each time an improvement. She sings, still - Bucky likes the song - but does not bleed. Instead, small flowers fill her mouth and her ears and trickle from her nostrils at death and she looks peaceful. Asleep in a meadow. It brings him great pleasure to see her like that, laying on her side opposite him, flowers spilling out from her impossibly tiny body.

A man crouches down between Bucky and his cat. He wants to ask the man to move, but they’re in a country with a language he doesn’t know if he speaks.

Surprisingly, the man says in American-accented English, “we want you to dream Steve back again.”

Bucky blinks slowly at him. Looks back to where he knows the cat is. “No,” he says, because he has seen what they do to the things he dreams.

His mind slips into another language, and the rest is all gibberish. He says, “no,” again, to be sure.

They set a picture on the ground in front of him. It is of Steve. It is not the Steve Bucky dreams of, but the later Steve.

When Bucky had first met him, that Steve, he had thought perhaps it was a dream of his. He had told himself he wouldn’t dream him, because Steve was soft and precious - ( _light-furred and blue-eyed, easily breakable_ ) - and he couldn’t do that disservice to his existence. But then Steve had been there with a body like a dream. Strong and solid. A manifestation.

It wasn’t until Steve spoke that Bucky knew he was real, because Bucky has never been able to dream Steve before in such perfect detail.

Bucky falls asleep and dreams of a meadow of flowers. He dreams of Steve, laying beside him, soft and small and Bucky’s to protect.

He returns empty-handed.

They give him another shot. They call it a mercy when Bucky knows it isn’t.

Bucky looks at the picture of Steve, because he still has the same, familiar face, the same features Bucky loves.

He falls asleep and dreams of nothingness. It isn’t an absence of dreaming, but an indeterminate time spent nowhere, hovering in the limbo of it all.

They try again and again, though really, there is no try on their part. They stand by and watch, expectantly, hands open and awaiting the gift they feel entitled to.

When it continues not to come - instead, they get a matchbox and a dove, some oversized coins engraved with an unknown script -, their patience wears thin.

It snaps.

And they keep him awake.

Periodically they come and inquire about Steve, and everytime Bucky says no. They prod him when he starts to doze off. They drag him to his feet and force him to walk laps around the room, shackled at ankles and knees and wrists, and when his body collapses they drag him. It continues for an eternity, until black starts to cloud his eyes, until he can’t see or hear anything.

He feels it spill from his eyes like tears, his nose like blood, his ears like the liquid remains of any brain he may have once had.

Through the inky wetness they ask him, and Bucky gasps, “ _yes_ ,” just so they will let him sleep, let him dream, and bring something back with him.

Unceremoniously, he is dumped onto the concrete. He is asleep before his body fully settles, going in motion from the air to the floor to the frigid peak of the highest mountain. There, she waits for him: soft and snowy white, without eyes but not without vision.

She comes with the chill of alpine air, and Bucky thinks that shall be her name.

He clings desperately to Alpine when the dream ends, knowing that his life depends upon dreaming once more - and death awaits him when he brings back the wrong creature.

Their benevolence is in the way they beat his body around Alpine. They kick and hit and spit upon him, but she’s left mercifully free, humming in her frantic vinyl voice.

“If we let you keep her, will you dream Steve?”

Bucky considers. His mouth feels clumsy and cold. He is the carcass of a car left rotting all winter - best sold for scrap. “I’ll try,” is all he says, but it seems to be enough.

Alpine burrows herself beneath his arm, her record-scratch purr a soothing lull into the world of sleep.

He dreams of Steve at home. Suspenders hanging off his hips. Bony. Sharp. Bucky longs to touch, but his hands don’t work. He gathers up Steve’s pencils and holds them instead. He thinks he can offer them, lure Steve in - not for them, not to bring back, just for a smile, one last time.

Steve never turns, and Bucky drags a pink pencil back with him, the same hue of Steve’s lips, of his cheeks in winter, of the point of Alpine’s nose.

The sharp scratch of her open mouth draws Bucky’s eyes away, upwards, and he makes a noise like a cry in return. “Please,” he begs, flowers falling from his mouth before they can fall from hers. “I’m trying.”

“ _Remember_ ,” a man, a new man, says, crouched down and awful - his breath is stale cigarette smoke. He drops Alpine, and she scurries back to Bucky’s side. “He left you. He let you fall from that train. He _killed_ you. You do not owe him. Make him pay.”

The thing is, Bucky doesn’t want to remember. They think he can’t remember, when the opposite is true. He remembers very well. It takes some time, but when it returns, it _returns_. He remembers it all. The summer sun on both their legs, trousers rolled up. A glimpse of Steve’s neck, sweat-damp and sweet. The horrific grind of the train on its tracks. Steve’s scream.

He remembers more than he cares to. He dreams more than he likes.

Bucky closes his eyes, and he dreams of the train. He sees Steve’s face - for a moment only, the briefest glimpse of earth-shattering horror, and then it’s too much.

It is not his own pain he longs to avoid.

For an immeasurable time now, pain has been his only companion. He is numb to it, but suspects he would notice its absence. It reminds him that he is alive, somehow, something.

What he cannot stand is Steve’s pain: Steve, who Bucky somehow dreamed to his side even across the world; Steve, who Bucky wishes he could dream just one more time, before he lets go for good. Like the train, his fingers slip - his grip on reality, life, existence, a tenuous one.

Another moment of Steve’s pain will surely draw the last breath from his bones. His heart cannot keep beating in a world of hurt like that.

When he opens his eyes, there is the sound of a train screaming along its tracks. Alpine is a cold patch on his chest as Bucky stares at the ceiling - or where the ceiling had previously been. The underside of each carriage occupies that space, passing rapid-fire over his head, leaving the two of them untouched. Instead he hears a chorus of screams, feels the entire foundation of the building shake as brick and beam fall down around them.

It’s a long, long time before the train stops moving, before the earth stops trembling.

 _Kiss me once_ , he thinks, pressing his lips to Alpine’s head, _then kiss me twice_ , and does so.

\---

Bucky hears a noise sometime later. Alpine has not left his side. He feels her furry ears twitch against his chin, seeking clarity in the sound of muted conversation where Bucky longs to avoid it.

If there are voices, there are people. If there are people, they will come for him. If they come for him, he will -

Keep living, probably. Unfortunately.

Bucky doesn’t waste time holding his breath or praying or hoping. He keeps stroking Alpine. He wonders if he could kill her quickly, painlessly, before they get her, too.

They get closer and Bucky notices Alpine purring, or what could be considered purring. It raises in speed, a seventy-eight to a thirty-three. He tries to soothe her with his human hand - the other has long since stopped responding.

Whatever is still above them - ceiling, rafters, nothingness - issues a warning creak, but nothing hits the ground. Bucky blinks.

“I _know_ this train,” Steve demands. He sounds frantic. Hurt. “I’m _telling_ you, I-” His voice breaks. A frustrated noise. More talking.

Bucky must have died, then, because his hell would be this - hearing Steve, but not being with him. He exhales shakily, and Alpine chirps the opening notes to the song.

“There’s someone here,” another voice says, and all falls quiet.

Then, footsteps.

Slowly, in the interest of keeping them hidden as long as possible, Bucky rolls his head to the left. Through a gap in the wheels of the train, Bucky sees Steve appear in fragments: boots, knees, forearm, face. There, in the space between the eternally gleaming wheels, is Steve Rogers in the flesh.

It is Azzano all over again. Steve, his dream made flesh in a way Bucky could never. He’s not such a skilled artist. He could never render the microexpressions of his face, the twist from surprise to fear to restraint to disbelief to hope. Each is impossibly detailed, every muscle twitch more intricate than every fur on Alpine’s tiny body, from the tip of her permafrost nose to her internal organs made of bellflowers.

Bucky watches tears well up in Steve’s eyes, and all he can manage is, “ _no_ ,” voice cracking on that single, precious syllable.

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve breathes, “Bucky, what did they-” but he’s already moving, given up on talking. He’s dragging his oversized body under the train, lying flat on his belly, crawling to Bucky’s side.

Someone yells something, but Bucky can’t focus on much more than Steve’s body right now. It’s close. So close.

“Steve?” He asks, and he hopes that this is real - dream or no, he’s spent too long away from Steve. He will perish without him.

Like a radio tuned, Bucky’s brain slots back into the frequency of Steve’s voice. It’s a litany, an invocation, a prayer, just Bucky’s name, over and over. He has no common sense, and Bucky is thankful for it. There is no delay with Steve’s body away from his - Steve is moving, then Steve is around him, and Bucky is sobbing. Tears stain Steve’s chest and Alpine’s fur, alike.

It racks his body, the sheer relief of it all. This is Steve - the unmistakable warmth of him, the firm, certain movements of his arms around Bucky. If Steve is here it means _they_ are not, and Bucky can’t fathom a world in which he is finally, finally free.

Time stutters and leaps.

The train is gone. Bucky is still in Steve’s arms, which is why he didn’t have to worry. He isn’t sure what inspires Steve to shuffle back, holding Bucky at an arm’s distance now.

“Buck,” Steve says softly, and Bucky blinks the tears from his eyes, ignores the clumps of his lashes, “what did they do to you?”

“What?” Bucky asks, because his throat is raw but he can’t leave Steve without an answer.

Carefully, Steve traces a jagged line across Bucky’s cheeks. It comes back stained a watery grey. He holds it up to Bucky in askance.

“Oh,” Bucky says instead. Steve has never known, or - perhaps more accurately - Bucky has never told. Surely he noticed at some point, the strange gifts Bucky would bestow. Medicine he could never truly afford. Fresh fruit. Cigarettes and liquor. Steve has never said he’s known, which is as good as ignorance to him. “Long story.”

“I’ve got time,” Steve says, and holds Bucky like he means it.

\---

It takes days for words to come.

Alpine dozes in the afternoon sun through the sprawling windows. Bucky has been pinching his own leg every few minutes to keep himself awake ever since they arrived. He almost envies the ease with which she dips fearlessly into slumber. A chasm is opening in the space behind his eyes. He draws his knees up to his chest to fend off the tender look from Steve, but it doesn’t work.

“You can rest, Buck,” Steve says, soft, of an enemy he thinks he can defeat, “I’ll keep you safe.”

Bucky’s throat hurts still, but he is making an effort when he replies, “you can’t.”

Then black starts to trickle down his cheek. It’s a single stream, only a pinch more than a normal tear. Bucky isn’t sure if he’s reached his limit already - _so soon_ \- or he’s unable to cry normally any more, another thing stolen from him. Whatever the cause, the effect is Steve, desperately grabbing his lone hand, talking to the roof. Medical assistance. Something.

“Steve,” Bucky says, and his voice cracks. “Don’t.”

“Bucky, what’s going on?” Steve asks in his fierce way, the way that masks the fact that he’s rapidly losing control underneath. Bucky doesn’t think he has it in him to hold together for both of them.

Bucky pulls his hand free and scrapes the tear away on the back of it, ignoring the black smudge it leaves in its wake. “You have to know,” he says, and it’s not so much a prelude as it is an accusation.

“Know what? Bucky, I don’t-” His hands bunch up and shake with the force of it, before reaching out hesitantly, jerkily, going for his face but retreating at the last second. “Is this a Hydra thing?”

“No,” Bucky breathes, and there’s genuine confusion on Steve’s face. He’s never been a good liar. He’s not an open book, and never has been. Rather he is a book written in a language only Bucky understands. “When I dream, I…” He flaps his hand bonelessly towards the window, the sun-soaked cat lounging there.

“You…?” Steve repeats, looking to Alpine and back. She chirps at the attention and stands, stretching out and trotting over to their spot on the couch.

Bucky inhales again, tries to envision it filling him with strength. It doesn’t work. “I dreamed her,” he explains in the span of one sharp exhalation.

Alpine turns to him and tilts her head, thoughtfully. Bucky can’t tell how she manages to look directly into the depths of his soul without eyes. She doesn’t seem to care for his disbelief.

At last, Steve breaks the silence. “How?” It’s small and unsteady, it’s Steve Rogers circa 1929 with a bad bout of pneumonia.

Bucky shrugs. It’s the best answer he has. “I just…,” he swallows his uncertainty, “bring things back. Sometimes.”

Steve leans in and places both his hands on Bucky’s kneecaps, stronger and sturdier than he remembers. “And this?” Steve asks, leaning in to run a finger under Bucky’s eye, catching what he missed.

Bucky licks his lips, suddenly dry-mouthed with Steve so close to him. “When I don’t dream, it happens. I think.”

“They did this to you?” Steve asks, equal parts awed and riled. “Hydra?”

“No,” Bucky admits, and that feels more dangerous than admitting he can bring back cats and trains and corpses from his mind. “I’ve always…”

Steve hums in thought when no further answer is forthcoming. Bucky watches a plan formulate behind his eyes. Ever the strategist. “Why can’t you sleep now? You can bring something back, if you have to.”

That is the crux of it. So much of what Bucky dreams is harmless novelty. A blind cat. Eternally fresh produce. Everyday objects filled with unfamiliar uses. But what of the things that are not so innocent? A sleeping clone of Steve? A train transported across time and space?

“The train.” Bucky settles upon. It’s not as bad a confession.

He watches Steve’s brows pull in and down, and then fly up and away in understanding. “That - _was you_?”

Bucky nods slowly.

“Tony’s being trying to figure that out for - since we found you.” Steve picks up speed, and Bucky’s brain is too tired to follow, stuttering along behind him. He talks a little more. Asks a question. Bucky watches as he reins himself back in again at the lack of response.

It’s not that he wants to be quiet. It’s that he can feel his brain drowning in the black tar. Thoughts don’t slot cohesively into place any more. “I don’t want to hurt you,” Bucky says, and selecting each word is a pain - putting them in comprehensible order even harder.

“You won’t hurt me, Buck, you can’t.”

Bucky doesn’t know how to _not_ worry about hurting him. It’s part of his genetic make-up.

Bucky blinks, and his eyes keep closed for longer than they should. “Please,” Bucky mumbles, hoping Steve will have an answer to a problem he can’t even voice.

“Let’s go somewhere, then. With no one around. And you can dream whatever you dream, and if it’s a train then there’ll be a train in the woods or the paddock or - wherever we end up. Okay?”

Bucky nods his head, feels it sloshing around, and pinches his thigh again.

\---

He dozes on the drive. Steve, reluctantly but obediently, nudges him every few miles and tries to engage him in conversation. Bucky only catches snippets of the journey: traffic, then none; buildings, then none; humans, then none.

They end at a stretch of open paddock behind a small farmhouse, nothing around for miles but the odd tree standing sentry in an abandoned field. Alpine considers their new location with a suspiciously upbeat tune. Steve fidgets in the driver's seat, looking expectantly at Bucky. Instead of acknowledging the look and all it entails, Bucky stumbles out of the car and towards the only other visible structure: a barn.

It once may have been the cliché red-clad barn, but now is decrepit. Falling apart. Bucky feels drawn to it for more than just its isolation. He touches his fingers to the splintered paint, and watches it flake off. It floats to his feet. Bucky pushes the door ajar and looks inside. The scent of it is musty hay, damp from something, but the floor calls to him. It’s little more than compacted earth, but it reels him in.

Bucky sinks to his knees like he’s in church, reverent in prayer. He places his hand to the earth and feels the pulse of it. He presses his cheek to the floor and lets his eyes slide close.

If Steve follows him, Bucky doesn’t know.

\---

The sun had been in the sky when Bucky entered the barn. It’s there again when he wakes, though he suspects it’s not the same day. It may not even be the same week.

Waking is slow. He watches himself stir, the barn wholly undisturbed. His hand is empty.

When he is finally able to draw his aching body up, unconvinced that he might be so lucky, there is nothing in the barn save old hay and a few brave mice.

All of that fear, and for this - a night (or two or three) of dreamless sleep on a dirt floor. Bucky feels himself start to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. For a moment, his brain doesn’t even believe that any of this is real. It’s like he’s never dreamed anything before in his life.

\---

When he returns to the house, Steve’s desperation is palpable. He’s sitting in a cosy little armchair opposite the window that directly faces the barn. Bucky knows Steve well enough to know that he’s been there a long, long time. Alpine has draped herself across the back of the armchair, snoring faintly above Steve’s head.

The restraint of him is commendable. Bucky watches thousands of questions push at his closed lips. In the end, all Steve says is, “The bathroom’s through there. I’ll make us something to eat.”

Bucky feels a joke pushing at his own brain - _“you saying I need a bath, Rogers?”_ \- but it dies before he can voice it. Instead, Bucky murmurs a, “thanks,” and lets himself into the bathroom.

Folded gently on the edge of the vanity is a pile of soft clothes. Hanging from a hook by the shower is a fluffy grey towel. Bucky touches each, just gently so as not to impart dirt from his unwashed fingers. They are soft and welcoming in a way he doesn’t think he’s felt in decades.

Funnily enough, they feel like Steve.

\---

It’s something to adapt to, existing with only one arm. They had disconnected it for repairs, initially, but Bucky had refused to have it reattached.

(if only they could simply remove all the defective parts of him so easily)

Bucky dresses slowly, savouring the softness and the struggle, rubbing his fingers against the fleece-lining of the sweatshirt Steve left for him. It’s slightly too large and hangs ridiculously off his left shoulder.

When he leaves the bathroom in a cloud of released steam it’s into a room that smells a little like frying bacon, a lot like burned bread.

There’s been no tour, but it’s hardly needed. The farmhouse is small. Bucky knows the living room he entered into, and the bathroom he just exited from. Beyond the bathroom is a door ajar, the corner of a bed visible. It’s a matter of retracing his steps to find the kitchen, dwarfed by the living room it’s attached to.

And there is Steve, resplendent in the afternoon sun, and seeing him is like taking a steel-toed boot to the chest. Bucky is left breathless and distressed by it.

“Buck!” Steve chirps. He fits here, in this old kitchen, much more than he did in the sleek comforts of the tower.

The counters, like the barn, have been dealt the misfortune of a coat of paint that doesn’t stick. The ratty fabric that hides the cupboards’ contents is falling off, and the stove is like the two of them standing there - a relic.

“Take a seat, I’m almost done,” Steve gestures with a pan to the table pressed up against one wall.

Bucky does as he’s told.

Steve chatters in a way that is clearly nervous, but sweetly endearing. Bucky listens in distantly, his brain no longer fogged by a lack of dreaming but by too much sleep. Food appears before him, and he eats it slowly. Steve apologises for burning the toast. Bucky tells him it’s fine. He doesn’t have the heart to tell Steve what he’s used to eating.

Eventually, both the food and the brittle conversation runs out.

“Whose house is this?” Bucky asks as Steve clears the plates away, and it’s not just the old decor that camouflages him here. It is the way he moves with an ease that belies a deeper understanding of the home.

“Mine,” Steve answers quickly. He smiles over-shoulder at Bucky before returning his eyes to the sink.

Bucky remembers the uneven ground, the bedroll that was never warm enough. He remembers being huddled close to Steve, sharing his misted breath, the plans they’d made. A little farmhouse. A simple life. Steve wanted a room with good lighting and good landscapes; Bucky wanted Steve.

“Why?” Bucky presses, tracing the grain of the wood with his nail.

“You don’t remember?”

That’s the thing: Bucky remembers. He remembers dreams and reality with equal weight. Alpine winds between his legs.

Bucky waits for Steve to look before he shakes his head. Steve’s strained smile hurts.

“In the war, we’d talk about running away. Leave the city behind, all the noise and business. Get a nice little plot of land and look after ourselves.” A wistful sigh. “You said I could get a dog, but I dunno how Alpine’d like that.”

Bucky remembers the dog. He remembers dreaming of him. “Fletcher,” he says automatically, recalling the feel of that thick, Spaniel fur. Had they not been living through a war, Bucky might have tightened his grip and brought him home.

Something clatters into the sink - Bucky suspects Alpine, only her tail is curled protectively around one of his bare ankles. Steve appears back at his side, hands dripping suds on the floor. “You remember?” It’s not accusatory but it should be.

Instead, Steve’s face is lit up, like Bucky’s given him some great gift when really it’s just the truth.

“I wasn’t sure if I dreamed the whole thing.” Steve’s transition to a painfully sympathetic look makes Bucky wish he’d kept quiet.

“Does that happen… often?” He picks his words with the sort of care Steve’s never shown before.

Bucky shrugs. “I’m not sure.” And that was the problem.

\---

That night, Bucky returns to the barn. He drags a blanket with him at Steve’s behest, lays it out on the dirt, then lays himself out atop it.

He dreams of Fletcher, of an olive branch in the shape of a Spaniel. Bucky learns him as well as he learned Alpine. Bucky touches his fur, memorises the way his wagging tail ropes in his hips until his whole body is wriggling in excitement. He learns his pretty brown eyes, his fine black eyelashes, and the way his gaze doesn’t shy away from Bucky’s. He lets a wet nose and wet tongue explore his body and catch his scent. Bucky runs his fingers over the leather of Fletcher’s collar, gently traces the engraving of his name on a silver tag.

And then, in the space between heartbeats, Bucky is awake and staring at the roof. From between its old, rotted slats, a downpour is entering the barn. For many, awful seconds, Bucky is paralysed there, unable to move. When he can, at last, he rolls to the side and sits up.

In his hand, he holds the leather strap of Fletcher’s collar.

Bucky hides it away before returning inside.

\---

Steve has work to do. Bucky knows this. He is not like Bucky, someone left on ice until they are needed. Steve is _always_ needed.

And it’s not that Steve leaves him without invitation. It’s that Bucky insists on staying at the farmhouse.

Steve, Captain America, frets. Bucky, nothing of importance, watches.

Before Steve leaves, he saddles Bucky with a phone and a forced promise to call if he needs help.

( _“Seriously, Buck. Just call. It doesn’t matter when. I’ll come straight back.”_ )

\---

Bucky doesn’t call, and so it takes Steve a week to come home.

Bucky spends much of that time listless. He lays out buckets to catch the water that seeps into the house, ignores the state of the barn. The place needs work, and Bucky knows he could if he just -

He thinks about the severed arm he’d presented them with. He remembers that it was his.

(he remembers how they dragged him to the chair after he’d said his own name, and he can’t move from the bathroom floor for hours)

Bucky lays down on the bed. He sinks into it. That is off putting.

But it smells like Steve, and Alpine curls up against his chest, and Bucky breathes out that tension.

He can do this.

\---

When Steve comes home, the first thing he notices is the way Bucky fills out both sleeves. Amazement crosses his face, still painted green and yellow with rapidly fading bruises.

"You can control it?" His voice is breathless with delight.

Bucky thinks of the gifts he used to bestow upon Steve.

Then he thinks of the ghost of Steve past he summoned, the sound the bullets made in his flesh, his bone, his brain.

"Sometimes," Bucky answers, tentative and truthful.

He makes no mention of the multitude of other things he bought back. It’s best Steve doesn’t know.

\---

There is something to be said for the act of creation. Actual, legitimate creation.

Two hands and freedom, that is what he has, even if each comes with its own conditions.

His hands: one, new and ungainly, with the appearance of flesh and bone but not the dexterity yet; the other, with permanently swollen joints and a persistent ache.

His freedom: that he must be useful to Steve, to Alpine, to his own small piece of the world.

(this condition is self-imposed but no less real)

With the rusty old supplies in the back of the barn, Bucky starts to piece the building back together. It’s slow work, made even slower by the days the cold weather renders his hands almost unusable, but there’s something of it - a progression.

It’s in the way the roofs stop leaking and the under-door draft disappears and the broken deadbolt is repaired.

It’s in the way Steve marvels at his achievements, touching splintering wood and crooked nails with unabashed pride.

It’s in the way Bucky gradually starts to feel okay with himself, with the time of Steve’s he consumes, with the plot of land that could belong to someone more deserving.

\---

With practice, his dream things become easier to select and drag back. Oftentimes Bucky imagines things he needs - rolls of wire for fencing and a new mallet to replace the broken one, a hatchet and firewood.

Easier, however, is not a promise.

A barn owl with iridescent wings. A hovering ball of light that wakes with the moon and sleeps with the sun. A bridle made of spider-silk thread, fine yet sturdy. A box of lit cigars.

Among the things of use, there are these - unintentional but harmless.

When Steve is away, Bucky’s subconscious vigilance disappears, and other fantasies seep in like poison.

He dreams of the concrete floor again. He returns with Alpine’s corpse in his hands, her slumbering, snoring body at his back.

He awakens with needles in his palms, paralysed, watching the coloured liquids turn and bubble in the barrel, the plungers mercifully untouched. He pulls those out with his teeth, spits them to the floor.

Then he dreams of their demands - _we want you to dream Steve_ \- and he watches from above as his own body and mind betrays him. There is nothing, and then there is Steve, laying by his side on that unrelenting floor.

“Can I sleep with you?” Steve asks, voice gentle. He reaches a hand out to Bucky’s cheek, and gently cups it.

He wants to live in that moment. He clings to that touch like a lifeline. “Please,” Bucky answers, knowing the fate he is dooming Steve to. He is weak. He can’t help that.

Bucky is forced to watch, paralysed and useless, as they drag Steve away. It’s not real, he tries to tell himself, it’s not _Steve_ , but that doesn’t make things any better.

When Bucky stirs from that dream, the cold floor beneath the back of his dream self turning into the soft mattress he has come to know, there is relief.

When he feels the firm chest under his ear, the steady heartbeat, the unbroken tide of respiration, Bucky panics.

“ _No_ ,” Bucky whispers, because maybe this is just another, torturous layer to the nightmare.

But it isn’t.

Then they’re twin poles on a magnet - repelling suddenly, rapidly, and Bucky is throwing himself back. His legs, entangled in the blankets, remain on the bed while his torso crashes into the wooden floor. Desperate fingers scramble unsteadily to free himself, to stumble upright and turn the light on, to keep his eyes fixed on the wall because he can’t bear the sight of what he’s done, not again, not again, _not again_.

Alpine leaps to his aid, winding between his legs, her mouth open in gentle, calming song.

He has to turn around.

He has to face this… this _thing_ he has birthed. It will be a mockery of Steve, of everything he stands for. Another lifeless corpse, a breathing doll with an artificial pulse. It won’t die, even with a bullet between the eyes, but Bucky will have to do _something_ to dispose of it before Steve, the _real_ Steve, returns.

With a shaky, fortifying breath, Bucky lays eyes on what he’s done. His shame.

It’s Steve, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at him with wide eyes. Bucky’s never - he’s created living things before, sure, but never like... _this_. Never a perfect, functioning replica.

“ _No_ ,” he begs again, a plea to some higher power to save him from himself.

“Buck, it’s me,” Steve says in a placating voice, hands open and easy on his thighs. “You’re with me. We’re okay.”

He unsuccessfully attempts to swallow a sob. “Tell me I didn’t do this.”

Steve stands up, each movement slow and predictable. “I don’t know what’s happening, Buck, but I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. Can I touch you?”

Bucky nods his consent, even as he whispers, “how do I know you’re real?”

But with Steve’s arms surrounding him, with Steve’s lips against his hair murmuring reassurances, how could he ever think otherwise?

\---

Steve is liberal with his touch now, but that is because Bucky is a broken thing. He might have had a chance, once, when he was handsome and whole, but now Steve's hands are just trying to keep him from falling apart.

It doesn’t stop Bucky’s heart from stuttering every time they make contact, though.

At Steve’s insistence, Bucky shares the bed and many sleepless nights beside him. At Bucky’s suggestion, Steve follows him around the house and the barn and the paddocks, helping him with all the two-man jobs and keeping him company otherwise.

They fall asleep separate and wake up entwined. Steve places his hand on the small of Bucky’s back whenever he’s ducking behind him. He overwhelms Bucky with casual, incidental touch.

And around that, as slowly and surely as the sun rising, a life starts to come together.

Steve buys chickens; Bucky dreams two cows.

Bucky makes planters out of wood off-cuts and dreamed tin sheets, opalescent in the sunshine; Steve plants sunflowers next to squashes, sweet alyssum beside swiss chard.

Steve disappears for days or weeks at a time; Bucky lets himself dream and yearn in equal measure.

He tends to the home. He waters the plants when they need it, and roots out the weeds. Looking at the garden layout, it’s like the two of them, Bucky muses, as they start to sprout and flower: Steve, beautiful and beneficial; he, protected and pragmatic.

\---

The bed smells like Steve, even when he’s away. The cheap soap smell is gone, replaced with something fragrant and floral, but he remains otherwise unchanged. Bucky sleeps on Steve’s side of the bed when it’s just him on his own. Alpine fits herself in whatever warm space she can find, bringing that familiar cold air with her.

Despite this - or, perhaps, _because_ of this - Bucky is able to sleep anyway.

It’s their bed and their room, but different - it is laid over with the soft shimmer of a kind dream, all the hard edges filed back and draped in warmth. The light overhead flickers, and Bucky looks up - it’s a candle, it’s a whole row of them, hanging from the ceiling.

“Bucky,” Steve says, kneeling on his side of the bed.

Steve is in his dream, which is ordinarily something to be afraid of. Though he hadn’t bought Steve back the last time, it doesn’t mean he’s incapable of doing so. Now, more than ever, with the bed too large and without Steve’s body filling it, he longs for the company. That is dangerous.

Bucky rolls at the sound of his name, his eyes dragging over Steve’s body. Since finding him again, Bucky has seen only two sorts of Steve: the one going to work, wearing clothes meant to keep him safe as he battles unspoken horrors; the other casual and off-duty, in the same sorts of soft but practical things he lavishes on Bucky.

This Steve is a third Steve. This is Steve without a shirt.

Bucky recognises the sight from their brief time in shared service, though it never felt like _this_ to see Steve unclothed.

In the war, he committed himself to memorising every inch of skin he was blessed with. It was the last drink of a man embarking on a trip across the desert, it was the only solace in a world that was grey upon grey, body upon body. Every day was an inch closer to his last, and Bucky took in Steve’s dirty, muscled chest and filed that sight away. He summoned the images on those brief, unexpected moments of quiet he got, and he begged for God or karma or whatever it was that kept the universe in balance for Steve to never know.

Now, though… there is the sense that Bucky can not only take his time to savour this, but that he is _invited_ to do so. He feels himself gaping, open-mouthed and rude, but Steve says nothing. He just smiles, sweet as anything, and Bucky moves to his knees so that they’re a mirror of each other.

“Is this okay?” Bucky asks, holding a hand out, palm first.

Steve just nods and reaches out for him in return, curling his fingers loosely around Bucky’s wrist and coaxing him in. The moment they make contact, the candles above flare brighter in time with Bucky’s heart. Bucky lays one palm flat against Steve’s chest and then the other, just feeling him breathe, the ebb and flow of his life there - real and irrefutable.

There is no sense of urgency here. It is as if time no longer exists, and Bucky can spend an eternity with Steve’s body bared to him.

He takes his time to stroke his hands up and down over the defined lines of Steve’s chest, his skin soft with the fine blonde hairs that cover it. Bucky is drawn closer in until his knees touch Steve’s, his wandering fingertips sliding up his shoulders and down his back.

It happens without thought - Bucky is knee-to-knee with Steve, then he’s chest-to-chest, sitting on his lap. One hand holds his back, as if Steve might move away. The other cards through his hair. It’s softer than Bucky remembers.

“I want to kiss you,” Bucky says, and that happens without thought, too.

Steve smiles at him, but makes no move. “Then tell me.”

And Bucky wakes.

\---

The phone Steve bought Bucky had remained on duty on the nightstand, permanently plugged in and sitting on 100%, ready for use.

Bucky decides to finally use it. He opts to keep things simple: _When will you be home?_

Steve’s replies (all of them) are instantaneous: _Tomorrow night._ then _Why?_ then _Has something happened?_ then _I can be home in a few hours._

Bucky deliberates. Words clamber around in his head, each begging to be set free. _I’m fine. Just curious._ then _I miss you._ because there’s no harm to that truth. It feels nice to offer Steve that. He cannot be honest with everything so easily.

 _I miss you too. I’ll be back as soon as I can._ Steve answers, slower, but only just.

Bucky sighs and stares at the phone a moment longer. Then he replaces it on the bedside table, its destiny met.

Trying to sleep further is a futile quest, but so much of what Bucky does is in vain anyway, so what’s one more fruitless pursuit?

\---

It takes Bucky all day to work himself up to it.

Then, abruptly, he takes the collar from its hiding place in the back of the barn and takes himself to that familiar dirt floor.

It feels fitting.

He twists the leather around in his hands, putting all his energy into picturing the dog - picturing Steve’s face when he sees it, joyous and bright, more than anything. He pictures Steve saying he’ll never leave again, but that’s probably just wishful thinking.

It takes time to fall asleep - Bucky watches the barn owl stir in the rafters, wings glinting pink and blue and orange in the sunset light. He hasn’t seen any mice, lately - the bags of feed go untouched. Bucky gives her a nod of thanks, but the owl merely turns her big, wise eyes away.

Eventually the touch on the collar becomes meditative, and Bucky falls into a trance. His eyelids flutter slowly, shutting out the wooden rafters above him, opening onto the bright blue sky.

“Fletch!” Steve calls, and Bucky doesn’t have time to be confused. Instead, he is set upon by the dog, face coated in slobber before he can raise a hand to defend himself.

Bucky laughs, reaching for Fletcher’s collar, but all he finds is smooth, uninterrupted ruff. That’s right - the leather band is still in his other hand. He squeezes. He brought it with him in, and he’ll be taking more out.

Unable to be restrained, Fletcher bounds around Bucky as he draws his body upright. The collar rests in his lap as he reaches a hand back to support himself, sinking into the vibrant chartreuse of the grass surrounding them. The field is endless, lush green as far as the eye can see, but Bucky’s eyes don’t need to see any further than Steve.

He can understand Fletcher’s full-body wiggle, because the sight of Steve sends a shiver through every inch of him.

“Pass me his collar?” Steve asks, coming to crouch just out of Bucky’s reach.

He does so silently, awed by the easy way Steve catches Fletcher and wrangles him back into his collar. There’s a leash, too - Bucky can’t remember thinking of it, but he distantly acknowledges that this dream is not strictly adhering to his rules any more.

Steve slides two fingers between Fletcher’s skin and the collar, checking the tightness, even as the Spaniel writhes in delight before him. “You’ll get him home safe, won’t you?”

“Of course,” Bucky says, taking the leash offered to him. He pauses with his fingers brushing Steve’s, looking to him in question. “You’re coming home, too, right?”

Steve just smiles and folds the leash into Bucky’s hand, squeezing his fist tight around it. “Hold on.”

As seamlessly as it came, it leaves, and Bucky blinks away the cloudless expanse of blue to a vision of red-gold fur. Fletcher whines in excitement, leaping in circles over and around Bucky. He keeps a firm grip on the rope leash even as he thinks this might be how he loses his other arm.

It wouldn’t be a bad way for it to go.

\---

In the house, Alpine and Fletcher get acquainted. Alpine is curious and wary - she takes after her father - and bats Fletcher with a paw when he gets too close. Fletcher merely whines and returns to Bucky, a sulking child tattling on their sibling. All is forgotten within moments, anyway, and the cycle begins again.

Bucky does not sleep much that night, what with a dog and a cat who don’t yet trust each other trying to share the bed with him. Bucky doesn’t know if Steve wants a dog sleeping in their bed, and he makes a note to check. It seems like a training choice, a matter of personal preference. With a cat, what’s yours is theirs, and that is that. There was never any question about Alpine sleeping in the bed with them, just as there has never been any question about anything she does.

By the time dawn creeps over the horizon, Bucky has been awake for hours.

He spends the day ahead alternating between fretting and working. Bucky collects eggs, milks the dream-cows with their endless supply, no calving necessary. He harvests what vegetables he can, and spreads it all out on the kitchen counter.

With care, Bucky - not a chef, by any means - pulls together a simple frittata, using what he has on-hand: fresh eggs and creamy milk, tomatoes from the vine, rich green chard and an unusually small pumpkin he dreamed (though can’t remember how or when or why). The temperamental oven lights after many futile attempts and warms the room. Bucky spends the half an hour it takes to cook sitting by the door, praying it won’t burn.

Fletcher considers this an invitation to climb atop Bucky, leaving snuffling kisses in his ears and cutting up his legs and hands with his ungainly feet and sharp claws. Though he’s full grown in appearance, Bucky doesn’t know that the dog is far beyond a puppy in mentality. No amount of gentle coaxing or firm reproach changes his behaviour.

Clearly he takes after Steve.

Bucky counts his lucky stars when the dog suddenly runs away, before realising he has gone to the closed door and has started barking ceaselessly.

Not a second later, Bucky hears the distant thrum of a car coming down the long, bumpy drive.

His heart leaps, and it’s a blessing that he remembers to turn the oven off, lest he burn their dinner with that simple oversight. He did not sacrifice the unblemished skin of his thighs for nothing.

Wrangling Fletcher takes Bucky almost as long as it takes Steve to reach their home, and they’re set back a good half-mile from the main road. He jumps and yips, watching Alpine saunter out through an open window, too high for him to reach.

Bucky clicks the lead into place just as he hears the engine click off.

There’s silence. The car door opens, and Fletcher lets out an ecstatic howl, which ruins any and all shock value the gift might have. Things are already not going quite to plan.

Nonetheless, Bucky holds Fletcher somewhat in check, and opens their front door.

Holding Fletcher in check, of course, was a tenuous state of affairs to being with. As soon as he saw Steve he was off, and Bucky - caught by surprise and his own nerves - stumbles in his wake. It’s only ten paces at most, from door to door, but it feels like miles crossed in the blink of an eye.

Steve steadies him when he arrives with an arm on his shoulder, and Bucky suddenly cannot breathe, cannot move. Steve is there, still in his Captain America outfit, shield in one hand.

“What is this?” Steve asks, high-pitched, as - certain in his knowledge that Bucky won’t fall - he crouches to greet Fletcher. His hands go over scruffy red ears and straight to the engraved tag around his neck. Bucky watches as Steve gently rubs his finger over the inscribed letters there, a man translating a foreign tongue. “ _Bucky_ ,” Steve says at last in a cracking voice, rubbing one hand on Fletcher’s back as he places dirty paws on Steve’s knee and licks the side of his face.

“It’s - he’s for you,” Bucky says first, which is both obvious and ridiculous. “I’m not asking you to give this up,” Bucky adds hurriedly, gesturing to Steve, but he knows now that _he_ can’t give _this_ up. Not Steve, and not the small world he’s made for himself. He can’t survive weeks without Steve by his side, and he knows it’s pathetic and selfish but it’s the truth of the matter. Their fantasy of the small farmhouse with a view, the two of them together - Bucky doesn’t have that. Not quite. Not yet.

This is a place where he can dream without fear - both the things he brings back, and the things he keeps locked away. Perhaps it’s time to give voice to some of those dreams, the ones that seem more impossible than a cat with no eyes, a train without tracks.

Fletcher snuffles around Steve’s shield, licking his fingers and nosing the cold metal. “I - I thought maybe… maybe there’s a way, someday, where you could stay, and it could be just us - us and the two kids. I know,” Bucky says as Steve stands, and Fletcher whines and twirls, a petulant, ignored toddler. “I know this is what you always wanted, and I’m not standing in the way of that. But sometimes you’re not here, and all I can think about is how much I miss you, and how much I just want to touch you and hold you and kiss you and…”

It’s not the confession Bucky hoped for. He envisioned it like this: eloquent and beautiful, moving. Instead it’s a shambles - his voice raises in desperation, a need to be heard and the certainty that he will be turned down intertwined. It’s asking for what he wants while simultaneously asking Steve to set him aside. He is nothing in the face of a world Steve could - _should_ \- be saving.

“Bucky,” Steve says on a sad laugh, “I never wanted _this._ ” He drops the shield. It clatters on the uneven ground. Bucky watches Fletcher jump upon it, as if it’s nothing because that’s how Steve’s treated it. Easily dismissed. Tossed aside. “I wanted you,” Steve breathes, and he reels Bucky in and kisses him once, kisses him twice, and then kisses him once again.

Bucky's waited a long, long time.


End file.
